Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs, founded in 1869, promotes itself as a “leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm that provides a wide range of services worldwide.” [] Goldman Sachs has became “the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history.” In 2008, the New York Federal Reserve approved a change in Goldman Sach’s legal status from that of investment bank to bank holding company, enabling it to qualify for a government bailout. The extensive network of top government officials who previously worked for Goldman Sachs, including former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, has been called “Government Sachs”.

Deregulation of Investment Banks
Goldman Sachs, with Henry Paulson as its CEO before he was named Treasury Secretary in 2006, campaigned successfully to eliminate any effective limits on the amount of leverage the largest investment banks could use. Under pressure from Goldman Sachs in particular, in 2004 the Securities and Exchange Commission removed the 12 to 1 debt to net capital ratio it had previously imposed. The SEC gave the five largest investment banks a special exemption so they could use their own risk models to determine their capital requirements. Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley were freed to leverage to extremely risky levels, in some cases reaching a ratio of 40 to 1. This piece of deregulation enabled the investment banks to substantially expand their businesses through borrowing, but left them fatally undercapitalized when they suffered losses. Barry Ritholtz and Aaron Task wrote in their book, Bailout Nation, that the deregulation of investment bank leverage made the financial crisis predictable. They state: “Thus we learn that the tragic financial events of 2008 and 2009 are not an unfortunate accident. Rather, they are the results of a conscious SEC decision to allow these firms to legally violate net capital rules…” The authors point out that none of the top US investment banks, despite their long history on Wall Street, survived this experiment with deregulation. Lehman Brothers shook global markets by going bankrupt. Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns were on the verge of bankruptcy when they were bought out by commercial banks. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley had to be quickly transformed into bank holding companies so that they could qualify for Federal Reserve loans and government bailout money.

In their report - “Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America” - Robert Weissman and Harry Rosenfeld explain that: “This superleverage not only made the investment banks more vulnerable when the housing bubble popped, it enabled the banks to create a more tangled mess of derivative investments — so that their individual failures, or the potential of failure, became systemic crises. Former SEC Chair Chris Cox has acknowledged that the voluntary regulation was a complete failure.”

Dealing in Subprime Mortgage Securities
Goldman Sachs contributed to the financial crisis by selling subprime, mortgage-backed securities. Alternative Mortgage Products, the bank’s mortgage bond division, sold $12.9 billion worth of sub-prime mortgage bonds in 2006. This made Goldman Sachs the 15th largest subprime mortgage bond seller and represented an increase of 59% in its subprime business over the previous year. From 2001 to 2007, Goldman Sachs sold $135 billion of bonds backed by risky mortgages. The bank was also the largest creditor of New Century, which was the second biggest subprime lender in the US until it went bankrupt in 2007.

Carl Levin, the Democrat senator chairing the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, stated in a April 26, 2010 news release that: “From 2004 to 2007, in exchange for lucrative fees, Goldman Sachs helped lenders like Long Beach, Fremont, and New Century, securitize high risk, poor quality loans, obtain favorable credit ratings for the resulting residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS), and sell the RMBS securities to investors, pushing billions of dollars of risky mortgages into the financial system.”

In 2007 when Washington Post columnist Allan Sloane asked mortgage experts to name the worst subprime mortgage product sold by a top bank, they picked a Goldman Sachs bond called “GSAMP Trust 2006-S3”. Within 18 months after Goldman Sachs sold this bond to investors, one sixth of the mortgages underlying the bond had defaulted. Some investors lost their entire stake. Sloane explained how Goldman Sachs’ subprime bond related to the losses and foreclosures suffered in the financial crisis: "“This issue, which is backed by ultra-risky second-mortgage loans, contains all the elements that facilitated the housing bubble and bust. It's got speculators searching for quick gains in hot housing markets, it's got loans that seem to have been made with little or no serious analysis by lenders, and finally, it's got Wall Street, which churned out mortgage ‘product’ because buyers wanted it.”"

In 2009, the McClatchy newspaper group conducted a five-month investigation [] into Goldman Sachs’ sub-prime business. The investigation concluded that “Goldman had joined other Wall Street firms in creating a colossal secondary market for subprime mortgages, converting them to securities and selling many of those securities offshore to circumvent federal tax laws and securities regulations.” Pension funds and unions are now suing the bank, claiming Goldman Sachs did not inform them of the risks when it sold them subprime mortgage-backed bonds. McClatchy found that in 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs sold $40 billion in securities backed by 200,000 risky mortgages.

Profiting on the Downturn in the US Housing Market
Goldman Sachs expanded its involvement in the subprime market up to the end of 2006, but subsequently “sold their mortgage positions, sometimes at a loss, and then adopted a bearish stance, using large quantities of the company’s own money to benefit from a crash.” In the third quarter of 2007, when other banks were announcing massive losses due to the housing downturn, Goldman Sachs trading division reported record profits. It earned $50 million in just one day by betting against the housing market.

The bank’s third quarter report for 2007 stated: "Net revenues in [trading] mortgages were...significantly higher, despite continued deterioration in the market environment. Significant losses on non-prime loans and securities were more than offset by gains on short mortgage positions." Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said in a December 15, 2006 email: “My basic message is let’s be aggressive distributing things because there will be very good opportunities as the markets goes (sic) into what is likely to be even greater distress and we want to be in a position to take advantage of them.” A November 18, 2007 email from CEO Lloyd Blankfein to Goldman Sachs executives said: “Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess. We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts.”

The short mortgage positions that were so profitable for Goldman Sachs involved using complex financial products to bet that the US housing market would deteriorate. One such product, Abacus, became the subject of an SEC fraud charges.

The bank was unique among the large banks in the degree to which it speculated on the downturn. A financial analyst commented that only Goldman Sachs “had the chutzpah to short the very market in junk they'd given birth to.” Phil Angelides, Democrat chair of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, described what Goldman Sachs did in shorting the mortgage market as “like selling a car with faulty brakes, then buying an insurance policy on the buyer of those cars.”

In an article entitled “A Wall Street Invention Let the Crisis Mutate”, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera explains how Goldman Sachs helped turn the US housing crisis into a full-blown financial crisis. The housing bubble had already begun to deflate by 2007, with lenders “starting to run out of risky borrowers to make bad loans to.” By creating packages of securities, “synthetic collateralized debt obligations”, Goldman Sachs allowed investors to bet on loans that had already been made. In this way, Goldman Sachs contributed to a whole new wave of speculative activity that ended with the near-collapse of the global financial system and government bailouts of banks.

In its fraud case against Goldman Sachs, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that CDO’s of the type the bank was marketing “contributed to the recent financial crisis by magnifying losses associated with the downturn in the United States housing market.”

Problems with other Goldman products have also come to light At the April 2010 Senate subcommittee hearings [] looking into the role of investment firms in the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs’ internal emails were cited as evidence that traders were selling financial products they knew were bad. A senior Goldman executive said “Boy that timeberwof (sic) was one shitty (sic) deal,” referring to a $1 billion CDO Goldman Sachs sold named Timberwolf. The trader responsible for Timberwolf said that the day it was issued was “a day that will live in infamy”. Five months later, Timberwolf had lost 80% of its value and resulted in major losses for Bear Stearns, an investment bank that subsequently collapsed. In another email, the head of Goldman Sachs’ mortgage division said: "Need you to send message to peter ostrem and darryl herrick telling them what a great job they did. They structured like mad and travelled the world, and worked their tails off to make some lemonade from some big old lemons." In some cases, Goldman Sachs has packaged and sold products with itself as the only party betting them, which was the case with the $2 billion CDO named “Hudson Mezzanine 2006-1”.

Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is investigating “whether securities sold by Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) led to losses at AIG and if the American taxpayer was a victim of fraud.” AIG, the world’s largest insurance company, was effectively nationalized in 2008 when the US government paid $85 billion (ultimately $180 billion) to rescue it from bankruptcy.

Exposing foreign institutions to subprime risk
Goldman Sachs used offshore tax havens, often in the form of secret deals run through the Cayman Islands, to sell its mortgage-backed securities to institutions worldwide, including European and Asian banks. In at least one such offering, as documented in a September 26, 2006 investment circular, Goldman Sachs pitched supposedly high-grade bonds backed by residential, commercial, and student loans, but the ratings of many of the mortgage securities hid their true risks and, in some cases, Goldman's descriptions exaggerated their quality. The September 2006 offering, one of billions of dollars worth of such deals in 2006 and 2007, was made at a time when Goldman Sachs began to disengage from the subprime market. "One bond analyst who reviewed the 2006 Cayman deal dismissed it in a report to clients as 'a not so cleverly disguised way for Goldman Sachs & Co. to unload its unwanted exposures to the subprime real estate market onto foreign investors.'"

Marketing what Goldman Sachs was simultaneously betting against
"In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting. . . . Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk."

Bubble machine
A recent article in Rolling Stone, "The Great American Bubble Machine", caused a great deal of controversy when writer, Matt Taibbi, placed Goldman Sachs at the center of every market manipulation since the 19th century including: The Great Depression, Tech Stocks, The Housing Craze, $4 a gallon oil prices, Rigging the Bailout, and future global warming derivatives trade.

Analysts have commented that the traditional investment bank functions Blankfein emphasizes make up a small proportion of Goldman Sachs’ operations. David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s budget director, estimates that 75 percent of Goldman Sachs’ revenues come not from serving clients but from trading for its own account in currencies, stocks, commodities, and fixed-income securities. Stockman said that it was “absolutely true” that Goldman Sachs could accurately be described as “a hedge fund masquerading as a bank.”

The bank’s portrayal of the social utility of its business contrasts with Matt Taibbi’s oft-quoted comparison of it with “a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” In his Rolling Stone article on Goldman Sachs, Taibbi puts the bank at the center of  key economic crises – the Great Depression, the Internet bubble at the end of the 1990’s, the housing craze that lead to the 2008 financial meltdown, and, most recently, the speculative surge in commodity prices.

Trading scandal
As a matter of practice, the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has provided select clients with advice that contradicts what its traders tell the rest of its customers. Once a week beginning in 2007, Goldman analysts gathered in what is called a "trading huddle" to talk about short-term changes in individual stocks or the market at large. Marc Irizarry's published rating on mutual-fund manager Janus Capital Group Inc. was a lackluster "neutral" in early April 2008, but about 50 top customers got a phone call that the stock was likely to go up, according to company documents.

The SEC case against Goldman Sachs
In July 2009, the SEC served Goldman Sachs with notice that it intended to file fraud charges against it. On April 15, 2010, the SEC followed through and charged Goldman Sachs and Fabrice Tourre, an employee of the bank, with defrauding investors. In addition to the SEC’s civil case, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio has asked the Attorney General for criminal charges as well, arguing "On the face of the SEC filing, criminal fraud on a historic scale seems to have occurred in this instance.” Shareholders are also suing the bank because of its failure to disclose the SEC investigation against it.

The SEC’s case focuses on a particular Goldman Sachs’ product named “Abacus 2007-AC1”. This product enabled Paulson & Co. Inc., a hedge fund headed by John Paulson, to make $1 billion betting against the US mortgage market. Paulson paid Goldman Sachs $15 million to create and market Abacus. The specific rules Goldman Sachs is accused of violating are: 17(a) of the Securities Act 1933, section 10(b) of the Securities Act 1934 and Exchange Act Rule 10b-5.

The SEC is claiming Goldman Sachs made “materially misleading statements and omissions” in its marketing of Abacus to investors, failing to inform them that Paulson’s hedge fund had “played a significant role” in choosing the subprime mortgage-backed securities underlying this CDO and that Paulson had an incentive to pick securities that would probably decline in value. Nine months after Abacus 2007-AC1 was sold to investors, 99 percent of the underlying mortgage securities had been downgraded. Abacus investors lost over $1 billion and Paulson made $1 billion from derivative side bets that Abacus would decline.

Commenting on the charges, former SEC lawyer Steven Thel says that given their serious nature the SEC would not have launched the case unless it thought it was going to win. Thel stated in an interview with the International Financial Law Review: “This is an example of a bank saying it was client led, but in fact was favouring hedge funds over institutional investors in the most grotesque way. I am sure the Goldman Sachs line will be that they gave all sorts of disclosure. But that boilerplate provision may not be enough.”

The potential for conflicts of interest is illustrated by the Abacus deal, since it involved Goldman Sachs structuring a collateralized debt obligation for a hedge fund that wanted to bet against it at the same the bank was responsible for convincing investors to buy this product. In its pitch book to market Abacus to investors, Goldman Sachs touted the reliability of ACA, a firm hired to manage this CDO. Goldman Sachs described ACA as having a “commitment to longterm bondholder and counterparty security - Durability and stability emphasized”. The bank assured investors that “No rated notes in any of ACA’s CDO’s have ever been downgraded.”

This marketing of Abacus on the basis of its safety contrasts with the comments in Goldman Sachs employee emails about the dire state of the housing market. In addition, Tourre wrote in an internal March 2007 email that the Abacus portfolio was “selected by ACA/Paulson” which seems to confirm the role Paulson had in selecting the securities making up the deal.

The SEC case against Goldman Sachs employee Fabrice Tourre
The SEC case against Fabrice Tourre describes him as the Goldman Sachs executive “principally responsible” for the Abacus deal. The SEC alleges that Tourre knew of Paulson’s interest in having Abacus decline in value, did not disclose this, and instead gave the misleading impression that Paulson had invested $200 million in the equity of the CDO with the expectation that it would do well. At a Senate subcommittee hearing, Tourre categorically denied that he had failed to disclose material information to investors.

Tourre’s emails suggest the trader knew at the time he was selling his CDO deals that they were bad for investors. Tourre advised his colleagues not to try to sell these types of deals to hedge fund managers because they were too “sophisticated” and would not let Goldman charge large fees, but instead that they should target "buy-and-hold ratings-based buyers". A particularly revealing email stated: “More and more leverage in the system, The whole building about to collapse anytime now…Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre]…standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstruosities!!!” Another Tourre email, passing on information from a Goldman’s Sachs mortgage trader, said that the mortgage business “is totally dead and the poor little subprime borrowers will not last so long!!!”

In a disparaging comment about the investors he was selling CDOs to, Tourre said in an email “I’ve managed to sell a few Abacus bonds to widows and orphans that I ran into at the airport…” An email from a Goldman Sachs executive to Tourre suggests Tourre was under pressure to execute these deals quickly, because “the cdo biz is dead we don’t have a lot of time left.”

Goldman Sachs’ defense against fraud charges
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has denied there is a conflict when his employees package securities they know are bad and sell them to investors. At the April 26, 2010 Senate subcommittee hearings on Goldman Sachs’ role in the financial crisis, Blankfein stated: ""In the context of market making, that is not a conflict. What clients are buying... is they are buying an exposure. The thing that we are selling to them is supposed to give them the risk they want. They are not coming to us to represent what our views are. They probably, the institutional clients we have, wouldn't care what our views are, they shouldn't care.” Blankfein did not address the role the bank plays in actively promoting deals, as its pitch book for Abacus demonstrates.

Not all financial institutions felt the kind of deals Goldman Sachs made to bet against the housing market were ethical. In his book on John Paulson, Gregory Zuckerman reports how Paulson also approached the now-defunct firm Bear Stearns to create a CDO his hedge fund could bet against. Paulson believed “the debt backing the CDOs would blow up.” According to Zuckerman, Paulson “didn’t think there was anything wrong with working with various bankers to create more toxic investments”. Paulson was open about what he was doing. However Scott Eichel, a senior Bear Stearns trader, was “worried that Paulson would want especially ugly mortgages for the CDOs, like a bettor asking a football owner to bench a star quarterback to improve the odds of his wager against the team.” Eichel turned Paulson down, in his words, because “it didn’t pass the ethics standards; it was a reputation issue, and it didn’t pass our moral compass. We didn’t think we should sell deals that someone was shorting on the other side.”

Goldman Sachs has said the SEC’s charges were “completely unfounded.” It released a report presenting the firm as a small player in the subprime business overall and with insignificant investments that could profit from a housing downturn. The bank is also claiming it lost money on the Abacus deal. However, a story in Businessweek points out “Goldman won't reveal the positions in its mortgage trading book, so there's no way to tell what's real.”

The bank has its defenders in the media. The CEO of Thomson Reuters, Tom Glocer, published an extraordinary blog, saying “Enough already” about the criticism of Goldman Sachs. In what may be taken as direction from management by Reuters reporters, Glocer said that the “[SEC]proceedings are best left to the securities and regulatory lawyers.” Glocer argued that while there may be a few “bad apples” among Goldman Sachs’ 35,000 employees, many were “upstanding, ethically decent mothers and fathers” and he knew a number of them personally. Sebastian Mallaby, writing in the Washington Post, said by charging Goldman Sachs the SEC had become “a poster child for government power run amok.”

As well, Republicans are questioning whether the SEC timing of it fraud charges was politically motivated to help the Democrats pass financial reform legislation. In this regard, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa gave the SEC a May 2010 deadline to provide records of communication between Democrats and the SEC.

TARP Bailout
On October 28, 2008, the US Treasury paid Goldman Sachs $10 billion in exchange for Goldman Sachs shares as one of the six large banks initially given funding from TARP intended to unfreeze credit markets. This bailout was done through the capital purchase division of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). The congressional oversight committee for TARP calculated that the Treasury paid $3.5 billion more for stocks than they were worth. Around the same time Warren Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathaway bought $5 billion in Goldman Sachs shares but paid less for them than the US government did.

In its 2009 letter to shareholders, Goldman Sachs acknowledges that the bank and its shareholders benefited from government intervention during the financial crisis: “Looking back on 2009, it is impossible to know what would have happened to the financial system absent concerted government action around the world… Goldman Sachs is grateful for the indispensable role governments played and we recognize that our firm and our shareholders benefited from it.”

Goldman Sachs’ Chief Financial Officier David Viniar said in February 2009 that the firm was eager to repay the TARP money because of the restrictions on executive pay that came with it. In June, 2009 Goldman Sachs bought back its shares from the government for $10.04 billion. It also paid the government an additional $1.4 billion to repay warrants and cover dividends.

Goldman repaid the $10 billion TARP money it received in June 2009.

In September, 2008, as the financial crisis peaked, Goldman Sachs ceased to be an investment bank and became a bank holding company.

Goldman Benefits from Lehman Failure and AIG Bailout
Questions were raised about the federal government's decision to allow the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a Goldman Sachs competitor, and the decision to prop up American International Group, Inc.

Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy
Goldman Sachs is one of the firms being investigated for possibly helping to bankrupt Lehman Brothers, an investment bank competitor, by short selling Lehman shares. A bankruptcy judge has given Lehman subpoena power, and it is using this power to require Goldman Sachs and others to produce documents. Lehman representatives say they are assisting the investigation of the firm’s bankruptcy which might lead to “possible prosecution of certain litigation” against those that damaged its business.

Another possible source of legal problems for Goldman Sachs relates to its purchase of Lehman’s trading positions when the firm went bankrupt in September 2008. CME Group, the world’s largest futures exchange, selected Goldman Sachs as one of a select group of companies allowed to bid on $2 billion worth of contracts held by Lehman Brothers Inc.(LBI) after it declared bankruptcy. According to a report by CNBC, this was “the first and only time the CME Group has conducted a forced liquidation of a member firm's positions, and left Lehman creditors with little to show for the valuable contracts.”

The bank examiner’s report on the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy concluded that the sale of Lehman contracts by CME Group resulted in a $1.2 billion loss, and there may be a basis for those with stakes in Lehman to sue. The bank examiner found that: “The bulk sale process (including the Goldman Sachs sale arranged by LBCS) resulted in a substantial loss to LBI (Lehman Brothers Inc.) exceeding $1.2 billion over the close-of-business liabilities associated with the positions, and a net loss of close to $100 million over the SPAN Risk (margin) requirements. Thus, LBI may have a colorable claim against CME, or any of the firms that bought LBI’s positions at a steep discount during the liquidation ordered by the CME, for the losses that LBI sustained as a result of the forced sale of house positions held for the benefit of LBI and its affiliates.”

AIG Bailout
After the $182.5 billion taxpayer bailout of AIG, Goldman received $12.9 billion from AIG in the form of collateral that Goldman already had in its possession and a cash settlement of ongoing margin disputes. $90 billion of the bailout money provided to AIG by the government went directly to banks, including this $12.9 billion to Goldman Sachs. Foreign banks were also major recipients of the AIG bailout funds prompting an investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

Benefits to Goldman Sachs of AIG Bailout
Some financial analysts have argued that in calculating Goldman Sachs’ government bailout, the total should include the $12.9 billion in government funds that flowed from the New York Federal Reserve through AIG to Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs was paid full-value for collateral calls on debt swaps it had made with AIG, and received more of AIG’s bailout money than any other firm. It also received AIG bailout money through deals it had with Societe Generale, a French bank that received $11 billion of the AIG bailout.

According to a New York Times analysis, before the government was forced to bail out AIG “Goldman’s demands for billions of dollars from the insurer helped put it in a precarious financial position by bleeding much-needed cash.” AIG analysts believed that Goldman Sachs had pushed other banks, including Societe Generale, to demand collateral payments, an accusation Goldman Sachs denies. AIG disagreed that the securities in dispute had fallen as much as Goldman Sachs claimed, but Goldman Sachs refused to allow third parties to set a value on these securities. The Times reported that “The federal bailout locked in the paper losses of those deals for A.I.G. The prices on many of those securities have since rebounded.”

Without the bailout of AIG, Goldman Sachs might have had to wait and seek compensation through bankruptcy courts as just one of a number of AIG’s creditors. Instead, because of AIG’s government bailout Goldman Sachs was able to immediately recoup100% of what it claimed AIG owed the bank. Investment analyst Joshua Rosner commented: ``It was the biggest crisis ever, if you're an investment bank. We didn't just save AIG. We saved the counterparties, the banks. It's true that it would have been a disaster, but it would have been a disaster for them.''

David Viniar, Goldman Sachs’ Chief Financial Officer, has revealed that the bank refused when AIG had asked Goldman to take less than it was demanding. In a media interview, he downplayed the potential impact on his firm of an AIG bankruptcy, saying it had hedged its AIG contracts. He did not address the implications of what AIG’s collapse would have meant for the financial system as a whole, and what would have happened to Goldman Sachs if an AIG bankruptcy had triggered widespread failures of other institutions. Viniar stated: “All we did is call for the collateral that was due to us under the contracts. So I don’t think there’s any guilt whatsoever.”

The 2009 Goldman Sachs shareholder letter, however, recognizes the benefits Goldman Sachs got from the AIG bailout: “While our direct economic exposure to AIG was minimal, the financial markets, and, as a result, Goldman Sachs and every other financial institution and company, benefited from the continued viability of AIG.”

A Wall Street Journal story draws on a report by the inspector general of TARP to rebut Goldman Sachs’ claim that it would not have suffered if the government had allowed AIG to go under: “If AIG collapsed and markets continued to swoon, Goldman would have had to make payments to the other trading firms and been unable to collect on protection it had bought from AIG.”

AIG and Goldman Connections
Stephen Friedman was chair of the New York Fed and also sat on the board of Goldman Sachs in 2008 when the Fed organized the bailout of AIG. Between December 2008 and January 2009 Friedman bought over $1 million in shares in Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was present at the September 15, 2008 New York Fed meeting where the bailout of AIG was discussed. On September 17, 2008 Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs CEO, endorsed the New York Fed’s bailout of AIG. Edward Liddy, a director of Goldman Sachs, was appointed by Paulson to head the nationalized AIG.

Geithner and AIG
At the end of 2008, with AIG running out of cash, negotiations were underway to determine what percentage AIG would pay on its obligations to credit default swap (CDS) counterparties, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Paris-based Societe Generale SA and Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank AG. Negotiations had reached discounts of as much as 40 cents on the dollar. However the government took over AIG on Sept. 16, 2008, and beginning November 3 negotiations were taken over by New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. After less than a week of negotiations, the New York Fed instructed AIG to pay 100 cents on the dollar, costing taxpayers at least $13 billion.

According to an Oct. 27, 2009 Bloomberg report , "The deal contributed to the more than $14 billion that over 18 months was handed to Goldman Sachs, whose former chairman, Stephen Friedman, was chairman of the board of directors of the New York Fed when the decision was made. Friedman, 71, resigned in May, days after it was disclosed by the Wall Street Journal that he had bought more than 50,000 shares of Goldman Sachs stock following the takeover of AIG. He declined to comment for this article."

Actions as bank holding company
There are questions about appearances that Goldman Sachs continues to operate as an investment bank after transitioning to a commercial bank holding company. Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and AIG, and question why they continue to act as investment bank a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, writes , "Goldman is also currently engaged in private equity investments in nonfinancial firms around the world, as seen for example in its recent deal with Geely Automotive Holdings in China (People’s Daily; CNBC). US banks or bank holding companies would not generally be allowed to undertake such transactions - in fact, it is annoyed bankers who have asked me to take this up. [. . .] is it envisaged that Goldman will cease being a bank holding company, or that it will divest itself shortly of activities not usually allowed (and with good reason) by banks? Or will all bank holding companies be allowed to expand on the same basis."

Invoking religious themes
As Goldman's reputation in the general public suffered in late 2008 and 2009, several Goldman spokesmen began to invoke religious themes in their media appearances and public events. "The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest," Goldman Sachs International adviser Brian Griffiths said on October 20, 2009, to a crowd in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all." Lloyd Blankfein similarly was quoted in the Sunday Times describing his company's work as having "a social purpose" and himself as "doing God’s work." While he later said this was meant as a joke, he also told one of Vanity Fair’s editors that “What’s good for Goldman Sachs is good for America.” Blankfein has said that as an investment bank, Goldman Sachs does a lot for the economy by allocating capital, raising funds for companies, and launching new businesses.

Apologies
Goldman chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein told a conference in November 2009, "We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret. We apologize." Published accounts do not quote Blankfein having elaborated upon which "things ... were clearly wrong."

Discouraging holiday parties
Goldman Sachs canceled its annual Christmas party in 2009, and it prohibited employees from paying for parties in their own homes. It also instructed employees not to gather in any parties of 12 or more people.

Greek Financial Crisis
In April 2010, Greece was at risk of defaulting on its national debt. Greece’s financial crisis threatens French, German and other European banks, which hold $193 billion in Greek government bonds. One financial analyst observed that “This crisis is beginning to look much like the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, when the falling value of real estate loans created a vicious circle in credit markets.”

Greece has been able to disguise the true nature of its fiscal problems due to a deal Goldman Sachs structured for it in 2002. The European Union has strict rules about how much debt a member government can carry and how large of a deficit they can run. But through a Goldman Sachs designed currency swap that involved what has been called “fictional exchange rates”, Greece was able to hide the size of its debt. Goldman Sachs went on to arrange $15 billion in government bond sales for Greece but did not disclose the swap deal, possibly leading investors to be fooled about the real value of the bonds.

Minimal Tax Payments
Goldman Sachs paid $14 million in taxes in 2008, a drop from $6 billion in 2007, and an effective tax rate of 1%. The bank made $2.3 billion in profits and paid out $10.9 billion in employee benefits and compensation. Goldman Sachs attributed its lower taxes to “changes in geographic earnings mix”. A tax expert commented that “Clearly they have taken steps to ensure that a lot of their income is earned in lower-tax jurisdictions.”

Phoning in to White House meeting
President Obama summoned leading financial sector executives to the White House for a meeting on December 14, 2009, at which he implored the companies to cease opposing financial reform and cooperate with homeowners struggling with their mortgages. Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein was one of three who failed to arrive in person and instead participated via conference call.

Seeking gun permits
Bloomberg News columnist and Warren Buffett biographer Alice Schroeder reported in December 2009 that some senior Goldman executives sought gun permits and were "loaded up on firearms and ... now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank."

Goldman Sachs’ Post-crisis Profits
In 2009, Goldman Sachs had the most profitable year in its history. It earned $13.4 billion which was almost as much as the top five US banks combined, with “aggressive trading” being a major source of its revenue.

Robert Scheer has said that “The story of the financial debacle will end the way it began, with the super-hustlers from Goldman Sachs at the center of the action and profiting wildly.” Scheer points out that “it was Goldman-Chairman-turned-Treasury-Secretary Henry Paulson who engineered the Bush-era bailout that left Goldman holding the high cards. The corporation was allowed to suddenly become a bank holding company, a privilege denied Lehman Brothers, and hence eligible for TARP funding and a sharp discount in the cost of borrowing money. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, then head of the New York Fed, worked with Paulson to give Goldman the federally protected status of a commercial bank and also worked on the deal that passed taxpayer money through AIG to Goldman.”

In February 2010, PBS Newshour aired a program entitled “Is Taxpayer Money Behind Profits at Goldman Sachs?” The program linked Goldman Sachs record profits to the backing it received from government during the financial crisis. One of the experts interviewed, former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson, explained that in 2008 Goldman Sachs was facing bankruptcy, but because of their status as an investment bank they could not borrow from the Federal Reserve. Johnson said that the authorities came up with the solution of transforming both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley into bank holding companies so that they could get access to cheap money from the Fed. This transformation solved Goldman Sachs’ liquidity problems and reestablished investor confidence, because the bank would now have the backing of the US government. Gaining status as a bank holding company also made Goldman Sachs eligible for TARP funds.

Former Goldman trader Nomi Prins was also interviewed for the PBS program, and she pointed out that another advantage of becoming a bank holding company was that Goldman Sachs would be covered by FDIC protection, which is ultimately guaranteed by the US taxpayer. Government backing means the bank is considered a very low risk and is able to borrow at extremely low rates to fund its deals.

L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, has estimated how much Goldman Sachs’ conversion to a bank holding company has been worth. Wray wrote in his blog: “hile many think of Goldman as a bank, it is really just a huge hedge fund, albeit a very special one that happens to hold a Timmy Geithner-granted bank charter, giving it access to the Fed’s discount window and to FDIC insurance. That, in turn, lets it borrow at near-zero interest rates. Indeed, in 2009 it spent only a little over $5 billion to borrow, versus $26 billion in interest expenses in 2008—a $21 billion subsidy thanks to Goldman’s understudy, Treasury Secretary Geithner.”

Another explanation for Goldman Sachs’ extreme post-crisis profitability is the elimination of much of its competition during the financial crisis. William Cohan, in his 2010 book on the crisis, has observed “some Wall Street firms, particularly Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, have figured out ways to make historic amounts of money in the wake of the global demand for their services and an equally historic lack of suppliers to meet that demand. After all by taking out the third-, fourth- and fifth-largest securities firms as competitors in the market, it stands to reason the remaining firms will benefit.”

Earnings and bonuses
According to a report by the Attorney General of New York State Goldman Sachs paid $4.8 billion in bonuses to executives and employees while earning only $2.3 billion after being a recipient of TARP bailout funds of $10 billion. Other reports claim the bonus pool was as high as 11.4 billion.

Breakdown of Goldman Sachs 2008 bonuses from the Attorney General's report ;
 * Tarp funds received: $10 Billion
 * 2008 Earnings: $2.3 billion, or $4.47 a share.
 * 2008 total bonuses: $4.82 billion (includes $2.24 billion in cash)
 * The top four received a combined $45.9 million
 * The next four received a combined $40.81 million.
 * The next six received a combined $56.40 million.
 * Number of individuals that received more than $10 million: 6.
 * Number that received more than $8 million: 21.
 * Number that received more than $5 million: 78.
 * Number that received more than $4 million: 95.
 * Number that received more than $3 million: 212.
 * Number that received more than $2 million: 391.
 * Number that received at least $1 million: 953.
 * Total work force: 30,067.

In the first and second quarters of 2009, the Goldman Sachs earned $5.3 billion in net income, the most profitable six-month stretch in the company’s history. By August of 2009, Goldman's stock had more than tripled since its low in November of 2008, to more than $160 per share. Goldman Sachs set aside $11.36 billion in the first eight months of 2009 in total compensation and benefits for its 29,400 employees. In 2008, while Goldman earned $2.3 billion for the year, it paid out $4.82 billion in bonuses, giving 953 employees at least $1 million each and 78 executives $5 million or more (although Goldman's top five officers, including Blankfein, made a public show of declining to take bonuses).

Bad bonus publicity
Goldman Sachs is considering its options dealing with the issue of bad bonus publicity. The company is reportedly planning to hire a brand manager to combat its negative public image. Three options have been suggested to soften the negative public reaction to the bonuses: 1) Pay the vast majority of the bonus in stock. On Wall Street, executives receive a combination of stock and cash, with the cash portion comprising 65% of the total bonus. 2) Goldman Sachs could pay much smaller bonuses and hand out larger salaries. 3) Goldman Sachs could forgo bonuses for the most part and just buy its stock in the open market. Because most of its executives have large pieces of their net worth tied up in shares of Goldman, the wealth effect would be bigger and less sensational than paying all those huge bonus packages at the end of the year.

Code Pink demonstrating at Goldman Sachs, October, 2009:

Coal investments
Goldman Sachs is a major financier of new coal plant construction. New coal-fired power plants being funded by the company include:


 * Hempstead (AL)
 * Plum Point Energy Station (AR)
 * Comanche Generating Station Unit 3 (CO)
 * Indian River (DE)
 * Stanton Energy Center (FL)
 * Longleaf (GA)
 * Council Bluffs Energy Center Unit 4 (IA)
 * LS Power Elk Run Energy Station (IA)
 * Edwardsport Plant (IN)
 * Rodemacher Unit 3 (LA)
 * Midland Power Plant (MI)
 * Cliffside Plant (NC)
 * Ely Energy Center, Phase I (NV)
 * Ely Energy Center, Phase II (NV)
 * White Pine Energy Station (NV)
 * Great Bend IGCC (OH)
 * Sallisaw Project (OK)
 * Red Rock Generating Facility (OK)
 * Cross Generating Station Unit 3 (SC)
 * Cross Generating Station Unit 4 (SC)
 * Pee Dee Generating Facility (SC)
 * Big Brown 3 (TX)
 * Lake Creek 3 (TX)
 * Martin Lake 4 (TX)
 * Monticello 4 (TX)
 * Morgan Creek 7 (TX)
 * Oak Grove Plant (TX)
 * Sandy Creek Plant (TX)
 * Spruce Unit 2 (TX)
 * Tradinghouse 3 & 4 (TX)
 * Valley 4 (TX)
 * LS Power Sussex proposal (VA)
 * Wise County Plant (VA)
 * Mountaineer (WV)

Coal energy assets
Goldman Sachs' subsidiary, Goldman Sachs Power Holdings, owns Cogentrix, a North Carolina-based company which owns four coal-fired power plants, with a total capacity of 574 MW.

Coal investment pricing
In June 2011, Goldman Sachs announced coal stocks look poised to rise 35% over the next six months, as U.S. bituminous thermal-coal producers increased exports to Asia and Europe, leading the firm to raise investment-recommendation rating for coal-sector stocks to "attractive." In conjunction with the sector upgrade, Goldman Sachs raised its ratings on Patriot Coal, Peabody Energy, and Consol Energy.

Lobbying
According to Center for Responsive Politics, Goldman Sachs spent $2,830,000 total in 2009 on lobbying.

Decade-long lobbying expenditure total (1998-2008): $21,637,530

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. spent $630,000 in the second quarter of 2009 lobbing on automotive industry issues and legislation related to the financial bailout program. Goldman also lobbied on energy reform and issues relating to financial regulatory reform in the April-June period. Besides Congress, the company lobbied the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve, according to the report filed July 20th, 2009 with the House clerk's office.

Notable Goldman Sachs’ Lobbyists:
 * Ken Connolly, a former staff director to the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
 * Todd Malan, formerly employed by the U.S. Trade Representative's office.
 * Michael Paese, a former top aide to U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

2008 Lobbying Expenditure (Top 15) Total: $5,210,000

2008 Top Lobbying Expenditure Recipients: 1. Goldman Sachs $3,280,000 2. Duberstein Group $400,000 3. ML Strategies $280,000 4. Baptista Group $270,000 5. Capitol Tax Partners $240,000

The company spent $2,380,000 for lobbying in 2006. $1,031,250 went to nine outside lobbying firms with the remainder being spent using in-house lobbyists. The lobbying firms included DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, The Duberstein Group, and Vinson & Elkins.

Lobbying positions
Goldman Sachs lobbyists circulated in the Senate a position paper on financial industry regulatory reform that argued, among other things, that some privileged institutions should be permitted to trade with less transparency than other market participants: In traditional exchange trading, bids and offers are public, and this transparency helps buyers and sellers to achieve the best price.

For some market participants, however, the openness and transparency of the equity market actually mean they are unlikely to achieve the best price. The risk, particularly for large transactions such as those undertaken by pension funds or large mutual funds (where most small investors have most of their equity exposure), is that other market participants will use this transparency to undercut the intended transactions....

Alternative trading platforms –- so-called "dark pools" of liquidity -- have evolved to address this problem. They work by separating liquidity from information about the transaction -- the participants, lot sizes and transaction prices. Through the process of "non-displayed liquidity," information does become available to both regulators and the public market -- but not until the transaction is complete. (Italics in original document)

Campaign contributions
2010 1st Quarter Campaign Contributions: $259,400 (52% to Democrats, 48% to Republicans)

Decade-long campaign contribution total (1998-2008): $25,445,983

Henry M. Paulson, Jr., then Chair & CEO of Goldman Sachs, was a Bush Pioneer having raised at least $100,000 for Bush in the 2004 presidential election. In 2006, Paulson was appointed by Bush to be Secretary of the Department of the Treasury.

Goldman Sachs gave $478,250 to federal candidates in the 05/06 election period through its political action committee - 35% to Democrats and 65% to Republicans.

2008 Campaign Contribution (Top 20) Total: $5,635,501

2008 Top Recipients: 1. Barack Obama (D) $884,907 2. Hillary Clinton (D) $405,475 3. John McCain (R) $229,695 4. Mitt Romney (R) $229,675 5. Jim Himes (D) $140,448

Revolving door influence
There is a long list of people who previously worked for Goldman Sachs who have held senior positions in governments around the world, as well as of people who formerly worked for government who now work for Goldman Sachs. During the financial crisis, critics noted “that decisions that Mr. Paulson and other Goldman alumni make at Treasury directly affect the firm’s own fortunes. They also question why Goldman, which with other firms may have helped fuel the financial crisis through the use of exotic securities, has such a strong hand in trying to resolve the problem.”

Goldman Sachs had strong connections to the government officials running TARP under the Bush administration. Henry Paulson had been CEO of Goldman Sachs prior to being named Treasury Secretary by President Bush. At the height of the financial crisis, Paulson hired Edward C. Forst, a Goldman Sachs executive and shareholder, to advise him on TARP. Paulson also hired Neel Kashkari, a Goldman Sachs vice president, to run TARP. Kashkari in turn hired former Goldman Sachs executive Reuben Jeffrey as TARP’s chief investment officer.

According to the New York Times, during the peak week of the financial crisis Hank Paulson, Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO was in "very frequent contact" with Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman’s current CEO. The extent of the contacts prompted Paulson to seek ethics waivers from the White House and the Department of the Treasury. During the week of the AIG bailout alone, Mr. Paulson and Mr. Blankfein spoke two dozen times, the calendars show, far more frequently than Mr. Paulson did with other Wall Street executives. On Sept. 17, the day Mr. Paulson secured his waivers, he and Mr. Blankfein spoke five times. Two of the calls occurred before Mr. Paulson's waivers were granted."

In his 2009 book, Too Big To Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves, Andrew Sorkin reports that same week Paulson was trying to convince Goldman to buy Wachovia.

"Jim Wilkinson, Paulson’s chief of staff, realized that such a deal would be a public-relations nightmare at the worst possible time—just as they were trying to pass TARP. “Hank, if you do this, you’ll get killed,” Wilkinson frantically told his boss. “It would be fucking crazy.” Paulson, he said, would lose credibility; he would be accused of lining the pockets of his friends at Goldman; the “Government Sachs” conspiracy theories would flourish."

Throughout this time, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, formerly a Goldman Sachs chief executive was aided in his administration of the Treasury Department by numerous advisers who also had personal ties to Goldman Sachs.

Political appointees and figures

 * Robert Rubin, Former United States Treasury Secretary
 * John Corzine, Governor of New Jersey
 * Henry Paulson, Chief Executive, U.S. Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush
 * Robert Zoellick - United States Trade Representative (2001-2005), Deputy Secretary of State (2005-2006), World Bank President. 2007-
 * Reuben Jeffery III, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs (2007-)
 * Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout
 * Mark Patterson, Obama’s Treasury chief of staff, former Goldman lobbyist
 * Ed Liddy, whom Paulson put in charge of bailed out insurance giant AIG, the former Goldman director
 * Neel Kashkari, Head of TARP
 * Gene Sperling, Deputy Dept of Treasury
 * Gary Genzler, CFTC Chair
 * Robert D. Hormats, Dept of State Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs (2009 -)
 * Phil Murphy, Democratic Party’s national finance chairman, represents the United States in Berlin [14]

Other notable Goldman alums: [13]
 * George Herbert Walker IV - member of the Bush family and current managing director at Neuberger Berman
 * Robert Steel - Chairman and President, Wachovia.
 * Jim Cramer, MSNBC Commentator
 * Michael Cohrs, Head of Global Banking at Deutsche Bank
 * Mark Carney, Current Governor of the Bank of Canada [92][93]
 * Malcolm Turnbull, Australian politician, currently the federal leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.
 * John Thain,former Chairman and CEO, Merrill Lynch, and former chairman of the NYSE.
 * Romano Prodi, Prime Minister of Italy twice (1996-1998 and 2006-2008) and President of the European Commission (1999-2004)[94]
 * Mario Draghi, governor of the Bank of Italy (2006- )[94]
 * Massimo Tononi, Italian deputy treasury chief (2006-2008)[94]

Former Goldman Sachs Employees Hired by the Obama Administration
Mark Patterson: former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, currently Treasury chief of staff;

Gary Gensler: former Goldman partner, currently chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Gene Sperling: former Goldman consultant earning $887,727 from the bank in 2008, currently Counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Diana Farrell: former Goldman employee, currently deputy director of the White House’s National Economic Council.

Former Goldman Sachs Employees Hired by the Bush Administration
Joshua Bolten: former Goldman Sachs executive, Chief of Staff to President Bush.

Henry Paulson: former Goldman Sachs CEO, appointed Treasury Secretary in 2006 on Bolten’s recommendation.

Neel T. Kashkari: former Goldman Sachs investment banker, hired as Interim Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability in 2006, headed the Office of Financial Stability during the financial crisis and given responsibility for TARP.

Reuben Jeffrey: previously Under Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs, Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, worked for 18 years at Goldman Sachs, hired by Kashkari in 2008 as interim chief investment officer for TARP.

Dan Jester: former Goldman Sachs strategic officer, hired on contract to advise Henry Paulson during the crisis, advised on AIG, GSEs, TARP and other bailouts.

Steve Shafran: former Goldman Sachs trader in Asian private equity, hired by Paulson to handle student loan and money market issues.

Kendrick R. Wilson III: former Goldman Sachs executive, enlisted as unpaid adviser to canvass banks on reaction to Treasury initiatives during crisis.

Edward C. Forst: former Goldman Sachs chief administrator, hired as advisor to Paulson during the crisis, became head of Goldman Sachs asset management division in 2010.

Robert K. Steel: former Goldman Sachs vice chairman, hired by Paulson Undersecretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance in 2006.

Ed Liddy: former Goldman Sachs director, appointed by  Paulson as CEO of  AIG.

Former Goldman Sachs Employees Hired by the Clinton Administration
Robert E. Rubin: former co-partner of Goldman Sachs, where he worked for twenty six years. Appointed by Clinton in 1993 to be first director of the National Economic and then appointed as Treasury Secretary, a post he held from 1995 to 1999.

Former Government Officials Hired by Goldman Sachs
Richard Gephardt: Goldman Sachs lobbyist, former House Democrat Leader.

Harold Ford Sr.: Goldman Sachs lobbyist, former Representative, (D-Tenn.).

Steve Elmendorf: Goldman Sachs lobbyist, former deputy campaign manager for John Kerry and aide to Richard Gephardt.

Kenneth Duberstein: Goldman Sachs lobbyist, Reagan White House chief of staff.

Eric Ueland: Goldman Sachs lobbyist, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s (R-Tenn.) chief of staff.

Robert Zoellick: hired by Goldman Sachs as managing director in 2006, former US Trade Representative 2001 – 2005, Deputy of the US State State Department 2005 – 2006,, n became World Bank President in 2007.

Goldman Sachs Connections with the Federal Reserve
William C. Dudley: former Goldman Sachs partner and managing director, hired by then President of the New York Fed Timothy Geithner to work at the New York Fed in 2007, became New York Fed’s President in 2009.

Stephen Friedman: former Goldman Sachs chairman, appointed to the New York Fed in the category reserved for representatives of the public, chaired New York Fed, chaired President Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Resigned from New York Fed in 2009 due to controversial purchase of Goldman Sachs shares.

Gerald Corrigan: currently Goldman Sachs managing director, former CEO and President of the New York Fed from 1985 to 1993.

South African officials
Prior to South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, Goldman Sachs trained ANC economists. Of those Goldman Sachs trained, Tito Mboweni became South Africa’s Reserve Bank Governor. On his retirement from the Bank Mboweni was hired by Goldman Sachs as an advisor. Lesetja Kganyagom, another Goldman Sachs trainee, is the director-general of the National Treasury.

Key executives

 * Lloyd C. Blankfein, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer,
 * David A. Viniar, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
 * Gary D. Cohn, President and Chief Operating Officer
 * John S. Weinberg, Vice Chairman
 * J. Michael Evans, Vice Chairman
 * Michael S. Sherwood, Vice Chairman
 * Gregory K. Palm, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of the Corporation
 * Esta E. Stecher, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of the Corporation
 * Alan M. Cohen, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Compliance

Members of the board

 * Lloyd C. Blankfein - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
 * Gary D. Cohn - President and Co-Chief Operating Officer
 * John H. Bryan - retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sara Lee Corporation
 * Claes Dahlbäck - Senior Advisor to Investor AB
 * Stephen Friedman - Chairman of Stone Point Capital
 * William W. George - former Chief Executive Officer of Medtronic, Inc.
 * Rajat K. Gupta - Senior Partner of McKinsey & Company
 * James A. Johnson - Vice Chairman of Perseus, L.L.C.
 * Lois D. Juliber - former Vice Chairman of the Colgate-Palmolive Company
 * Ruth J. Simmons - President of Brown University
 * John F. W. Rogers - Secretary to the Board
 * Lakshmi N. Mittal - Chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal and 8th richest person in the world
 * James J. Schiro - CEO of Zurich Financial Services

Contact details
85 Broad Street New York, NY 10004 Phone: 212-902-1000 Fax: 212-902-3000 Web: http://www.goldmansachs.com

Related SourceWatch articles

 * bank
 * banking
 * Neil Kashkari
 * Dambisa Moyo
 * Goldman Sachs International
 * Joseph H. Ellis

External resources

 * Goldman Sachs Written Testimony for Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission


 * Sold Out - How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America, Consumer Education Foundation, March, 2009.


 * Eye on the Bailout, ProPublica


 * Big Bank Profile: Goldman Sachs, Service Employees International Union, accessed October 2009.


 * John Kenneth Galbraith, “The Great Crash”, The Great Crash 1929, Copyright 1954.


 * McClatchy newspaper group five-part investigation of Goldman Sachs:


 * Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, “Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: The Role of Investment Banks”


 * Julie Creswell and Ben White, “The Guys From ‘Government Sachs’”, The New York Times, October 17, 2008.

External articles

 * Andrew Cockburn, "The Wall Street White House: How Goldman Sachs and Citi Run the Show", Counterpunch, July 2, 2009.


 * Matt Taibbi, The Great American Bubble Machine, Rolling Stone, July 9-23 2009


 * Peter Daou, Obama and the Goldman Fiasco: Is This America Under Democratic Leadership?, The Huffington Post, July 17 2009


 * Gretchen Morgenson and Don Van Natta Jr.,Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics, New York Times, August 8, 2009.


 * Art Levine, "New Goldman Sachs, Buffett PR Gambit: Give $500 Million To Small Businesses," Working in These Times, November 20, 2009.


 * Art Levine, "SEIU Leads Protest Against Goldman's So-Called 'God's Work'," Working in These Times, November 16, 2009.


 * Richard Teitelbaum, Secret AIG Document Shows Goldman Sachs Minted Most Toxic CDOs, Bloomberg, February 23, 2010


 * Andy Rowell, "Exclusive: How Goldman Sachs Rigs the Game", Spinwatch, 20 March 2011.

The McClatchy Series

 * Greg Gordon, How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash, McClatchy Newspapers,November 1, 2009.


 * Greg Gordon, Why did Goldman stop scrutinizing loans it bought?, McClatchy Newspapers, November 1, 2009.


 * Greg Gordon, Mortgage crisis shows why financial regulation is needed, McClatchy Newspapers, November 1, 2009.


 * Greg Gordon, Goldman takes on new role: taking away people's homes, McClatchy Newspapers, November 2, 2009.


 * Greg Gordon, Goldman left foreign investors holding the subprime bag, McClatchy Newspapers, November 3, 2009.


 * Greg Gordon, Why did blue-chip Goldman take a walk on subprime's wild side?, McClatchy Newspapers, November 4, 2009.